Fotograf Magazine

The Chicken and Egg of Format

Marcel Stecker’s series Film Formats (Filmové formáty) was created in 2009, during his first year as a student of photography at FAMU, the Czech national film school in Prague. This series of eight medium-format contact prints formed a visual parallel to his theoretical essay on the subject of “aesthetized vs. non-aesthetized.” It was a subject of the kind that is pleasantly irksome, much as it is exciting to listen to the sound of a saw as it cuts into the branch upon which one is perched. Is it possible to escape from the tenets of aesthetization? This is essentially asking whether it is possible to escape from the power of the image itself. I believe the answer provided by Stecker is in the negative.